100,000 Russians ready: Ukraine expects Russian monster deployment

Russians with first mini-success

According to Ukrainian sources, the Russian attackers deployed 900 tanks, 555 artillery shells and at least 370 rocket launchers around Kupiansk and Lyman. If these figures are correct, Russia would have sent nearly a third of its troops stationed in Ukraine to the relatively short stretch of the more than 1,000-kilometer front.

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Apparently, the offensive shows the first mini-successes. According to both warring sides, the Russians managed to cross the Sherebets River, which runs along the front, at least one point. The Ukrainians, the Belarusian military channel “Military Summary” reports, assumed that the river would keep the Russians off their backs. Therefore, there are relatively few Ukrainian defenses in this area – now retaliating. Ukraine has already withdrawn a first reserve brigade from the south and sent it to the region.

Cluster bombs can provide a breakthrough

As the Russians regroup in the northeast, Ukraine’s western backers continue to wait for a decisive breakthrough by Volodymyr Zelensky’s forces. But the Russian minefields in particular would make it difficult for the Ukrainian advance, writes British ammunition expert Steve Brown in the Kyiv Post.

With the US cluster bomb munitions it just received, Ukraine could clear such minefields relatively efficiently. A single cluster bomb projectile releases hundreds of hand grenade-sized minibombs shortly before impact, hitting a defined area and detonating mines.

If Ukraine succeeds in such a targeted evacuation and subsequent advance, the hoped-for breakthrough could come soon, Mike Martin, a British war expert at the War Research Institute at London’s King’s College, told Deutsche Welle. “The Ukrainians have to break through the Russian positions in just one place, then the entire Russian forces in this region could collapse.” The relative calm of recent months says nothing about the future course of the war.

Wagner’s uprising demonstrates Putin’s reservist problem

Such a breakthrough through the Russian front would also be promising, as the Russians apparently have only a few reservists behind their previously stable defense systems. At least that is what British Defense Minister Ben Wallace (53) claimed last week during a performance on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Vilnius.

The smooth advance of Wagner’s troops towards Moscow showed that Putin had hardly any active reserves on his side. Wallace was convinced that the Ukrainian counter-offensive would eventually succeed: “We underestimated Ukraine from day one of this war. And we still do to this day.”